Ok, the story of how DEFCON IV sucked for The_Chief.
Chapter 1: The Drive.
Laserboy, Nacho, Myself, and a couple of other teenage kids drove down to
Vegas in Nacho's cramped american car. We left at 11:30am Thursday from
Downtown Portland. (5th & Taylor busstop, accross from Radio Shack)
The trip down was really a lot of fun. We had the Jerky Boys playing
repeatedly, good jokes, and a lot of excitement about going to Vegas.
I wore my obnoxious hawaian shirt, and my mirrored sunglasses, purple
shorts, and grew a beard. I looked really wacky.
We drove /almost/ all of Interstate 84. Idaho sucks, because the road
is shit. Utah isn't much better.
The speed limit there was 75 everywhere except Oregon. That was very cool
since we did about 80/85 all the way there.
We stopped at a Denny's in Salt Lake City, and had dinner around midnite
Thursday. We phreaked a couple of calls to our family. It was cool
telling my mom that I was in Salt Lake City. (I left when nobody was
home.)
We drove thru this tiny corner of Arizona, and snuck up on Vegas from the
South. Man, once you cross the border into Nevada, things aren't quite
normal. The fucking gas stations have slot machines.
Chapter 2: The Arrival.
We got there around 7:am on Friday.
We had effectively no sleep on the way down. Defcon hadn't started yet, and
wouldn't for a few more hours, but we went to the conference room to see
if it was being set up yet. We talked to this security guard, who
wouldn't let us in the room, but was really cool. I had a really good
feeling about the security. They seemed to be much smarter than the Lloyd
security.
We chatted for a few, then wandered away.
The dude we were gonna meet up with to leech a room from wasn't there yet
either. We wandered Vegas as zombies till he arrove. I crashed in his room,
they got food. I woke up and went and played around Vegas for the afternoon
as Defcon was setting up. Evening rolled around, and things at the con got
more interesting. But the speakers (what I really wanted to see) wouldn't
start till the next day.
Midnite rolled around, and Hacker Jeopardy started. That was
entertaining, but as the contestants and crowd got hammered, I left.
I met up with the crew (Laserboy, Nacho, etc) back in the hotel room around 2
or so, and we played with his big laser. He fired it out the window
shining it on the ground, and playing with the people walking around --
tens of stories below.
We had our fun, and Laserboy put away the laser. He then let us know that
he's going to these peoples' room from New York. (They're big on phones).
He paked up his laser and took off.
We watched TV for an hour or so. (it was the bombing at the olympics
coincidentally). Then we went to bed around 3:am.
Chapter 3: The Gestappo arrives.
3:30a The unending stress begins.
We hear a forcefull knock on the door. I hear the someone on the other
side of the door say, "You have to open the door".
I think to myself, "Don't open the door, Nacho".
Nacho gets up, goes to the door and as I hear another knock, Nacho opens
the door.
I hear walkie-talkies, and this security dude walks in (thin caucasian
dark hair), and goes straight for the window. He opens it up, and gets on
his mic.
Most of us were very groggy, except myself. I hadn't gotten to sleep yet,
but I pretended to be asleep when I n.
As we all started to wake, Our pissed off selves mumbled, "What the hell?"
There were three more security folks out in the hall. One was this big
fat fucker, one was this little short mexican prick, and the other was a
fat bastard in a suit. They're all packing 45's.
I hear something over the radio of the dude at the window.
"Yeah, that's the one," comes outta the radio.
Security dude says, "Alright, who's got the pointer laser?"
"Nobody. What laser?" chimes DJ (one of the teenagers who drove down with
us.)
"Are you guys with DEFCON?" Suitman asks.
Nobody responds.
"Who's got the laser? We ain't leaving till somebody gives us the laser."
"We don't have the laser."
"You either give us the laser, or you get the fuck out."
"We don't have the laser -- the guy who had it left."
This was a big mistake. We were admitting guilt right there.
"You either give us the laser, or we kick you out."
Obviously, we were dealing with intellectual giants.
"We don't have the laser -- the guy who had it left."
"What's his name?"
"We don't know him. He's just some guy."
We covered for Laserboy just fine, but it did /us/ no good at all.
"You either give us the laser, or get out."
Now Nacho tries desparately to reason with these guys, by speaking camly,
clearly and rationally. And I'm sure it would have worked. But Retard guy
who we were staying with, and rented the room suddenly went ballistic. He
jumped outta bed, and began swearing, and proceeded to tell us that we
were leaving.
Now there's another twist. I happend to be carrying material that could
be considered contraband, and had a keychain laser. I was fairly nervous.
These guys wanted a laser badly, and I wouldn't have put it past the gun
toting bastards to search all of my belongings, and my person.
Nacho continues to try to reason with them by asking if they would take 'a
laser' or 'any laser' if we could produce one. I wasn't too happy about
that. I didn't wanna give up my $50 laser for one, and for two, I didn't
want to be arrested, searched, charged, jailed.
Now, as we're getting out of bed, and collecting our stuff, collecting
Laserboy's stuff, I'm extremely anxious to get the hell outta here, and away
from the security staff.
We all get escorted into the elevator, where the fun really begins.
Dude we shacked with decides to make snide remarks.
"You guys are really doing a good job."
"Shut the fuck up."
"No, I just wanna tell you guys that you're doing a really good job."
Fat Fuck get's in Dude's face.
"You wanna start something with me?"
"No," he smiles with a shit-eating grin.
The elevator stops. Fat Fuck says, "Get these guys outta here, I'm taking
him to the back, alone."
Ok, now I'm getting really nervous. I really don't want to leave dude
alone with these security fuckers, (no witness, no crime), but I do want
to get the hell out of there.
"Take the first punch, you pussy."
"No, I ain't that stupid."
"You're a fucking pussy. You ain't got the guts to hit me."
"No, I just ain't that stupid."
And Dude leaves the elevator, and proceeds to the lobby, unharmed.
We're in the lobby, waiting to get our refund, when I ask Nacho for the
keys to his car so I can put my items, and Laserboy's items away. Far away.
I go to his car carrying Laserboy's and my stuff, leaving the rest of the crew
behind. I put my stuff away, and look out from the parking garage, and
see the crew standing in the hotel parking lot.
I run to meet them. Nacho and I then proceed back to his car, and tell
them that we're bringin it around to get them.
Chapter 4: I like the night life.
Nacho and I run back to his car, hop in, and roll around to the parking
lot. Nobody's there.
We circle for a few minutes, looking for them. The sinking feeling in my
stomach getting worse by the minute.
The crew's nowhere near the parking lot. Nacho and I decide to cruise up
and down LV Boulevard. By now it's about 4:30, and we're getting really
pissed off. I've had no sleep for over a day and a half. And as the
seconds tick by, it sucks more and more.
After rolling around for about two hours, we decide to park it and show
back up at Defcon in the morning. It starts at about 12p, so we had
about 6 hours to kill. (it was gonna start at 11:am, but they moved it
back cause everyone was drunk at hacker jeopardy.
After parking and trying to sleep in an uncomfortable american car for
nearly 20 minutes, we break down and try to find a cheapass motel. That
didn't work since I have no credit cards. Nacho didn't either since his
fucking wallet was with the dumbasses who bailed from the parking lot.
We then sat outside of the lobby of another cheap motel on some
lawnchairs for about an hour.
Then Nacho got the itching to check his email. We drove down to UNLV, and
waited for the library to open, after a failed attempt to get into the
student computer labs. We hacked up the library's computer card catalog,
but found no telnet access. Denied.
I took a shower in the lawn sprinkler.
We drove down to some cheapass casino/restaurant, and had the $1.50
breakfast special. Man, was that good. Tipped the waitress 10%!
Ok, it's 12:pm. Defcon is starting.
We park the car in the hotel's lot, and make our way to the con. We get
in there, and don't see anybody we know. I make my way to the water
cooler, and grab a free water. I then wander around and try to put the
word out that we're looking for Laserboy and the rest of our crew.
Then I see Mexican Security Prick. Probably the only bastard to still be
on shift from early morning. My fuckin' luck.
"Remember me?" says Mexican Security Prick.
"Yep," says I.
I'm thinking, to myself about how If I had a chance to shave, change my
clothes, change my glasses, I wouldn't have been recognized.
"You guys know you can't be here at the conference, you have to leave,
you don't get your money back. If we see you here again, we arrest you,
and you go to jail for trespassing."
He escorts Nacho and myself out to the street. We try to reason with him,
but he's an asshole who gets a powergasm from kicking two kids offa the
property.
We walk back to the car and asess our situation: Fucked.
What could we do? We can't just leave. Nacho has no money, no driver
license, no laptop, no newton, no anything. We can't just leave the
other kids here. And how the hell do we find them? We don't even have a
redbox.
We wander Vegas trying to figure out what the hell to do. Luckily Nacho
had asked for the name of the security supervisor, and gotten it. We call
up the hotel, and ask to speak to him. He won't take our call.
We talk to his seceretary, and explain the situation, and that we only
want to find the party we came with and LEAVE. That doesn't work.
We're more fucked than ever. We consider calling a lawyer. We do. We get
an answering machine. We give up on the lawyer.
We continue to wander LV, but decide to wander to the placed where Laserboy
would most likely go. We hang in McD's. We hang in Denny's. We do a loop
around the hotel looking for them. Eventually we end up back in Denny's.
I drank a lot of Denny's Pepsi that afternoon.
Chapter 5: The End.
I'm sitting in a booth and I turn around for a second. I spot Laserboy. I
dive for him, and let him know that he owes us dinner. Of course he's
totally oblivious to what happened, and totally in the clear from
security.
I brief him on the situation, and let him know that we're leaving as soon
as we find DJ and John.
After playing with some Motorola walkie-talkies, we are able to track
down DJ and John.
It turned out that Dude got pissed, hopped a plane, and left a bunch of
minors alone in LV. The minors spotted somebody from the con and asked
him if they could crash in their room.
We got our shit back, pulled the car around, and left for home.
The End.